Hackaday links: September 7, 2012

MakerSlide, European edition

We’re all familiar with the MakerSlide, right? The linear bearing system that has been turned into everything from motorized camera mounts to 3D printers is apparently very hard to source in Europe. A few folks from the ShapeOko forum have teamed up to produce the MakerSlide in the UK. They’re running a crowdsourced project on Ulule, and the prices for the rewards seem very reasonable; €65/£73 for enough extrusion, v-wheels, and spacers to make an awesome CNC router.

Kerf bending and math

A few days ago, I made an offhand remark asking for an engineering analysis of kerf bending. [Patrick Fenner] of the Liverpool hackerspace DoES already had a blog post covering this, and goes over the theory, equations, and practical examples of bending acrylic with a laser cutter. Thanks for finding this [Adrian].

276 hours well spent

[Dave Langkamp] got his hands on a Makerbot Replicator, one thing led to another, and now he has a 1/6 scale model electric car made nearly entirely out of 3D printed parts. No, the batteries don’t hold a charge, and the motor doesn’t have any metal in it, but we’ve got to admire the dedication that went in to this project.

It was thiiiiiiis big

If you’ve ever tried to demonstrate the size of an object with a photograph, you’ve probably placed a coin of other standard object in the frame. Here’s something a little more useful created by [Phil]. His International Object Sizing Tool is the size of a credit card, has inch and cm markings, as well as pictures of a US quarter, a British pound coin, and a one Euro coin. If you want to print one-off for yourself, here’s the PDF.

Want some documentation on your TV tuner SDR?

The full documentation for the E4000/RTL2832U chipset found in those USB TV tuner dongles is up on reddit. Even though these chips are now out of production (if you haven’t bought a proper tuner dongle yet, you might want to…), maybe a someone looking to replicate this really cool device will find it useful.

As for the makerslide and most product from US above $20, we face huge custom taxes plus high shipping prices. So it makes sense to spread the production by “region”. As for European Union, we save on tax or at least on custom paperwork and delay, and a bit on shipping. It is still complicated to ship above 1m length… I need some 2 meters slides!

I’m really bummed that the tuner chip in those usb tv tuner dongles are not being made anymore. I got one, but I hope someone else brings out such a useful and wide-range device for as cheap of a price. I guess manufacturers of other chipsets are getting questions from people who are interested. I hope we haven’t seen the last of the awesome, cheap, very wideband SDR components.

If you need that, you could go with an AA, a USB and a micro USB plug, plus a dual scale ruler. That would fit. Never ever use coins for reference until the entire world (including north Korea) is using the same currency.